2012 has already witnessed historic Internet policy debates in the United States over digital copyright, online privacy, and cybersecurity. These issues have bitterly divided many organizations, academics, companies, and policymakers.

It comes as some relief, then, that the next major Net policy battle will unite almost everyone in a common cause: stopping the United Nations from taking over the Internet.

The U.N.’s International Telecommunication Union (ITU) is currently planning what will be on the agenda for this December’s World Conference on International Telecommunications (WCIT) in Dubai. The fear that the ITU might be looking to exert greater control over cyberspace at WCIT has led to a rare Kumbaya moment in U.S tech politics and everyone is rallying around the flag in opposition.

In the short term, however, this threat is somewhat overstated. There’s no way the U.N. could “take over the Net.” It’s a technical impossibility. The Internet’s infrastructure and governance structure are both too decentralized for any one global entity to take control.

Nonetheless, vigilance in the face of greater global meddling with the Net remains a worthwhile endeavor. Many countries across the globe are hoping to gain a greater say over how the Net operates. Some of them are looking to extract money out of the system since traditional telecom revenues have dried up. Other governments cite a variety of amorphous security concerns, often driven by the fear that unregulated electronic networks could threaten their regimes. Still other states claim that hate speech, objectionable content, and online child safety are problems that demand coordinated global solutions. “Cleaning up the Net” has always had a broad constituency. Finally, personal privacy and intellectual property protection have emerged as major motivations for greater global “harmonization” of regulation.

But the resistance movement to rebuff greater global Net control faces two serious problems. First, there’s a lack of a clear, principled policy vision to counter those growing global calls for centralized Internet control. Second, many of those who oppose greater Net regulation in the aggregate actually favor it in narrow circumstances for their own pet issues.

Over time, these factors could make it easier for governments across the globe to wrap their tentacles tightly around every facet of online life and commerce, even if there’s little chance of the U.N. “taking over the Net” in the short term.

The Limits of “Multistakeholderism”

To the extent that America and other liberal democracies possess an Internet policy paradigm these days it seems to come down to “multistakeholderism,” which refers to the process of bringing together diverse stakeholders and ensuring they have “a seat at the table” in policy negotiations. The problem is, “as an ideology that can guide change, multistakeholderism is both radically incomplete and flawed,” argues Milton Mueller, author of Networks and States: The Global Politics of Internet Governance. That’s because multistakeholderism is simply a process, and “does not provide any guidance on substantive policy issues of Internet governance,” Mueller correctly notes.

Saying you believe in multistakeholderism is like saying you believe in democracy; no one could disagree, but it doesn’t really tell us much about which values are paramount to shaping a system or a society. In this case, multistakeholderism doesn’t tell us what principles or policy vision should guide our efforts to prevent the ITU and other international actors from asserting more control over the Net. Even if all the groups “at the table” agree that such a result would be a disaster, how is multistakeholdism going to stop it?

On its own, it won’t. Here’s what will: A clear statement in defense of cyberliberty and “Hands Off the Net.”